18
(which doubled as his office). In response, Maxwell asked
him some basic questions – the title of the book, what it
was about, and what the first sentence said.
“What he was basically telling me was that I could have
told, within the first paragraph of that book, that the
book was not for me,” Wylie says. “You can tell in a cover
letter whether the book is likely to be any good. You can
tell from the first sentence. You have to develop the
confidence of judgment, which is not something you’re
born with, or something that you inherit from studying
literature in college; I had to really develop it. It’s like
working out your stomach muscles.”
Wylie’s subsequent training regimen consisted of
studying the decision-making processes of the best
institutions in the industry – the best literary agency
(at the time, ICM), the best publishing house (Knopf),
and the best magazine (
The New Yorker
). Wylie grew
increasingly confident in his judgment, and discerning
quality work became a quick process. Although he rarely
sifts through the slush pile today, he recently showed a
new arrival to the office how to sort through the offerings.
“There were about 40 submissions,” he says, “and it
took about two and a half minutes. It was a matter of
reading the cover letter or the first page, and it was just,
‘Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope…’”
But Wylie’s judgments are only worth something if
they’re legitimized by others. An agent is successful only
if
both
authors and editors trust his opinions. This is why,
he explains, it was difficult for him to land deals when
he was just starting out. If Wylie wanted to represent a
young writer, for example, his lack of a proven track
record would require a significant leap of faith on the
writer’s part. On the other end of the process, his lack of
clients meant there was no context in which to place the
untested writer, so there was little ground for editors to
go on.
“I’m going to a publisher, the publisher doesn’t know
who I am, I can’t get anyone to return my phone calls, and
I
say the writer is good?” Wylie exclaims. “What are the
chances I know what I’m talking about? I have one client!”
The situation changed quickly once Wylie began to build
his client list. Writers wanted to associate themselves
with other writers they respected, and when publishers
saw young scribes among a list of clients like Roth and
Rushdie, they were more willing to take a chance on
these fledgling writers despite their lack of a proven
track record.
“If you have this rigorous standard, and you are bring-
ing young writers into that standard, and representing
them from that perspective, then you’re actually doing
them a service,” Wylie notes. “You’re putting them in a
very strong context.”
Although Wylie is clearly driven by a love for literature,
he feels just as comfortable working out complicated
business arrangements. This versatility has familial
roots. While his father, Craig Wylie, had been editor-in-
chief at Houghton Mifflin, his uncle, Harry Fowler, was a
prominent banker who served as the president and board
chairman of what was then known as the Fiduciary Trust
Company of New York.
“One of the things I saw when I was starting out was that
the good writers have bad agents and the bad writers
have good agents,” Wylie says. “But what would happen
if money wasn’t the goal, if the quality of the work was
the goal, and you brought a strong financial discipline to
good work? They don’t make money like Danielle Steele,
but they make money, for a change. Our job is to try to
help writers to get paid enough so they can concentrate
AP IMAGES / GEORDIE GREIG
Andrew Wylie
’65
